Seagull
by Joriel
Summary: Wufei finds something to save in the form of a small bird.


Where are all the birds? I brought little cubes of bread to throw to them. Quatre said there are thousands of seagulls on the beach. I thought maybe it would be relaxing to feed them, to see something unaffected by the war.  
  
But I alone on this empty beach, the only sound is the gentle rhythm of the sea. It is a soothing sound, a new one, but no less soothing to my soul. My ancestors spent time on the shores I suppose, and it's still in my instincts, in my soul. I like the sound.  
  
The others would laugh at me, saying I like nothing better than the sound of gundanium clinking and explosions, but I don't know how to make them understand me. I do what I must, for the reasons also burned into my soul.  
  
The first and loudest reason in my mind is that I cannot allow this all to go unpunished, unchallenged. Not for any kind of glory, or thrill. But because I studied the history of my home, in particular the holocaust. Millions died because they had a different way of life. The Nazi's killed millions based on the theories of a few men in power.  
  
But they were not the only guilty ones. Every german citizen that turned his or her head away from the atrocities is guilty too. Every one that refused to see what was happening in their world is guilty by complicity. Only those that fought back, however futilely, were  
  
innocent. I want to be innocent. Luckily, I have Nataku to make my fight more than a futile token of resistance.  
  
Then there is Meiran, in a twisted way. I can never bring her back, never reclaim the lost chance to know her someday. We didn't really have enough time to truly understand each other. I fight so that no one else will have to lose anyone. Quatre understands this part a bit more, he feels this in his heart too.  
  
Lastly there is the hope that someday I can live a normal life. But I think I studied America a little too long, their revolution for freedom. I cannot bow down to economic and social slavery to OZ any more than the ancient Americans could stand to give in to England anymore.  
  
But I've lost my train of thought again. Where are the seagulls? I have seen a picture of them. Graceful lines designed for flight, soft grays and whites blending them into the skies. Cute little avian faces, alive with inquisitiveness that reminds me of the feelings of my youth before all this began, when books were the only thing I cared for. Funny, hopping gates in the vidfiles that make me want to laugh. Oddly harsh voices for so graceful a creature, as if to balance them out, softness and hardness.  
  
Then I come over another dune, and for a long moment I cannot move. There they are, all the seagulls in the world it seems at that moment. Millions of them!  
  
All laying across the sand in bizarre and unnatural poses. There is no grey and white on these creatures, only the dirty black of oils and other by products from war machines. There is no harsh cawing to protest their fate, only an uneasy silence, and a faintly nauseating smell able to rise above the overpowering scent of the sea. Further along I can see them not covered in the slime, but they look broken, crushed. I can see the footfalls of an Aries walking down the beach in a cruel mockery of that ancient poem Footsteps that they always display with a picture of footsteps through some sand. These footsteps were etched in bodies, not just imprints in grains of earth.  
  
Now they were etched into my soul.  
  
But there! One lone survivor was hopping in that unlikely gait, looking warily at me, as if to say, are you going to hurt me too? Is your kind not happy enough?  
  
I sit on the dune, and throw him the cubes of bread. He eats them, gobbling them up as fast as I can throw. When he turns to the left to catch a piece I threw too hard, I can see the laceration on his side. The poor creature.  
  
It wasn't a thought, really. In my head there was a picture of the aviary in Quatre's home, and my feet were moving carefully to the bird. I made my voice as soothing as I could, and reached out gently. He tried to get away, hopping awkwardly, but his eyes were resigned to whatever fate I deemed for him. He knew he could no longer run, there  
  
was no place left for him to go. He was waiting to die.  
  
I held him close to my heart, feeling his beat amazingly fast. Against me in patterns of fear and uncertainty. I had no words that he would know as comfort, so I just ran my free hands soothingly over his good side as I took him back to the car Quatre had loaned me.  
  
On the way back I kept thinking that Trowa is there, even if Quatre doesn't want a seagull Trowa will make it okay somehow. I never stopped to ask myself why one bird was so important, he just was. 


End file.
